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May 14, 18
Filed under: Action, Gentrification, Housing, Ontario
Rent strikers in Hamilton, Ontario were not intimidated when corporate suits showed up at their door demanding rent.
Late this afternoon, a bunch of corporate executives from CLV Group made the trip from their head office in Ottawa to visit striking tenants at the Stoney Creek Towers, in East Hamilton. These suits went door to door, harassing tenants in their homes and demanding that they pay their rent. One of the tenants that CLV visited was Florence Morgan, a 78-year-old tenant from 50 Violet, pictured above.
The group included David Nevins (Vice President of Operations, CLV Realty Corporation, Ottawa) and Dayna MacDonald (Customer Care Coordinator, CLV Realty Corporation, Ottawa), along with several others. Nevins is one of the top investors in InterRent REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust), CLV’s parent company and the owner of the Stoney Creek Towers. Nevins has a personal, financial interest in displacing longstanding, poor tenants from their homes in order to renovate units and bring in higher-paying tenants. Nevins has served as a corporate point person overseeing the company’s AGI applications.
Having corporate execs travel from head office to visit tenants in their homes to ask for back rent obviously goes beyond standard procedure. CLV executives are clearly running scared and resorting to desperate tactics in an attempt to intimidate tenants and undermine the rent strike.
Tenants will not be intimidated by visits from their landlord. Today, when tenants heard that their neighbours were being harassed, they immediately rallied to support each other. If CLV thinks they can harass tenants in their homes, they picked the wrong town! As Florence said today, “They know that we’re out on rent strike. They shouldn’t even be coming door to door. I’m not scared. I mean, I’ll just slam the door in their face if they come back another time.”
Stoney Creek Towers tenants remain firm in their resolve to refuse their landlord’s proposed rent increase and to demand that the landlord make repairs to their units. Tenants from over 70 units went on rent strike on May 1st and many more will join on June 1st. Support the #EastHamiltonRentStrike! Defend Hamilton!
